The Clock of Soulmates
by FeZeTh13
Summary: An answer to a prompt on the Kmeme. ("If a clock could count down to the moment you meet your soulmate, would you want to know?" so! everyone somehow has their own personal clock somewhere on them, like embedded in their in skin since birth because magic or its a futuristic!au or something, and it counts down until the moment they meet their soulmate.) ...Warden and Hawke in here.
1. Mahariel

**_This is a prompt from the Kmeme, and since I am so new there and don't know how to post on that site correctly I brought it here. I will post my Hawke version tomorrow I think.  
_**

**_The prompt: _**saw this prompt on a few other kinkmemes and decided to drop it here!  
"If a clock could count down to the moment you meet your soulmate, would you want to know?"  
so! everyone somehow has their own personal clock somewhere on them, like embedded in their in skin since birth because magic or its a futuristic!au or something, and it counts down until the moment they meet their soulmate  
basically just using that premise do whatever with any pairing! op is not picky at al! : )

* * *

Mahariel wakes up to a world that is wrong. That mirror she and Tamlen found was tainted, tainted her, and then left her alone. Tamlen wasn't with her and hadn't been found. She awoke to the news that she would have to leave her clan for her cure, become a Grey Warden, and nothing in her life would ever be the same.

She awoke to a time, counting down, etched to the inside of her left wrist.

"Duncan, I can't recall having this before. It was there when I woke up, can you please tell me what this is?" she asks her future Commander after a couple of days of staring at the passing time. She frowned when Duncan gave her a confused and disbelieving look. "What? I've seen others with it and giggling over it, but they said I couldn't know because I was defective since I never had one."

"It is a countdown," he pauses and takes off his glove to reveal a wrist with no number, just like hers had been. "A countdown until you meet your soul mate. You said you never had one?"

"I didn't," Mahariel thinks back on her life. There were others that didn't have them. Bonded adults, quite a few of the more mature elves, and even some of the children. The difference was that they could tell you that they did have them, and they remember the exact day the numbers stopped. Merrill, Fenarel, and Maren had them. She, Junar, and Tamlen didn't have them, but then again, she and Tamlen never did.

"Oh," a heart shattering gasp rasps out as she puts the pieces together. Tamlen. She'd love him. Still did. She had no idea until recently that she held such affection for him, but… it all makes sense. Tamlen and her had been only days apart, he four days birthed before her. Her mother left her; of course she needed to be nursed by milking mother. She'd met Tamlen two days after birth and her time stopped.

"My… my time stopped when I was a babe. He, Tamlen is gone! My time started as soon as he was gone! Why? I'd rather it have never started again!" she cried out and mourned again, the loss of her first soul mate, gone too early.

She bound her wrist tight and never looked at the numbers again.

* * *

"I don't understand why you insist on helping fools caught in a trap," Morrigan chides Mahariel as they, Alistair, and Leliana run to help an ambushed caravan.

"I do," Mahariel answered and flinched when her wrist pulsed. Creators, that… tingles. Mahariel can feel her whole body come alive, the colors of the grass and leaves become greener, brighter. Her heart beats hummingbird fast and her wrist pulses again with clarity.

Nimbly and swiftly cutting her glove with her dagger, she sees her numbers.

'No.'

36..35..34..33

The seconds are rapidly descending and she wants to cut them with her dagger. She does not want to meet this one. She had her love, and he is gone.

A memory washes over her. Wynne told her just last night that it is ok to love again.

"_I am not ready."_

"_It takes time to love again. Just because you meet them, does not mean you fall in love with them at first sight. Give it time, see what happens. Do what you wish, not what the numbers dictate."_

She curses herself for not checking the time last night. She may have just stayed in camp today and avoided this altogether.

"Oh," Alistair starts beside her and Mahariel looks up.

'By the Dread Wolf, of course it's an ambush for us.'

Mahariel barely dodges from the falling tree.

"The Grey Warden dies here!" The armored elf in front yells.

'He's the leader. Get him.' She brings up her blades, and like a silent hunter, enters into the fray, blades swinging a combination of lightning and fire.

A giant pulse from her wrist wrenches her eyes to it, long enough to see

_3_

Brings her left blade to block his

_2_

He blocks her right blade headed for his legs

_1_

Meeting his amber eyes, the sorrow, the anger, the fear

_00:00_

Her time shines on her wrist at four zeroes, his a glowing reflection of hers. He looks disturbed at their frozen stance and matching numbers.

Clanging his blades away Mahariel does not go for his neck like she ought. She knocks him in the temple with her pommel. He goes down.

She will see who this one is that has stolen all her time.

* * *

**I imagine the Crows making Zevran's clock not show so it wouldn't distract him. They didn't think he would live long enough anyway or actually have a soulmate that he would meet. The Crows cannot steal true love away though.  
**


	2. Hawke

**_I may write my other Grey Wardens and their stories. Especially my Tabris and Morrigan... that would be funny. Hmm._**

* * *

Carver always scoffed when Bethany and Marian would squeal over their numbers. No matter how far off in the future the numbers were, and that Marian teased Bethany that she would get married first, the girls loved to play pretend. Still though, the best times are when Marian and Bethany would spot Carver staring at his in secret and they would tease him relentlessly, making the fledgling warrior blush and rage.

Hawke remembers that was before all the magic, the hiding of the numbers until the children could control their magic, and the death of Malcolm Hawke. Before Bethany was taken, never having met her soul mate. Marian had briefly wondered how her mate felt when his numbers suddenly stopped and either disappeared, or maybe they even started over again. She wonders sometimes, if they ever mourned for her.

* * *

Marian doesn't reveal her numbers again until they get to Kirkwall, Carver's also appearing since it was only fair and he couldn't reveal them. Her heart stutters when she sees the numbers down to a year and month.

She doesn't have time for this though. Marian has a family to take care of, a year of servitude, and she has to make sure the Templars do not find her.

She does not give it more than a cursory glance in the next year.

"Well this is bloody ridiculous," Hawke says as a small battalion of Tevinters stand in front of her, Varric, Carver, and Anders.

"You got that right," Varric begins the battle with a volley of arrows that Hawke answers with an icicle. Carver yells out, angered, and joins the fray, slicing straight through the closest soldier. Anders shoots a lightning arc, making a clear path to the Tevinter mage for Hawke to start a battle between mages. It's not an easy battle, but it is over quickly.

Downing a lyrium potion and throwing one to Anders, Hawke makes her way for the stairs, ready for this night to be over with. A giant sigh escapes the party when yet another man in armor comes down, mocking them and calling for more men.

He is answered with a dying man gasping his last breath.

Marian's numbers pulse on her wrist as she stares at the stairs and she gasps at the strength and strangeness of it.

Her heart flutters, face heating up like the sun, and her breath catches. She'd not forgotten, but pushed it to the back of her mind, it wasn't important. She wasn't expecting to actually meet him with all this mess that was her life.

Now though, that it is actually happening, she can't stop the feelings from overflowing.

4

"Your men are dead"

3

"And your trap has failed"

2

A long legged man takes the steps one at a time, a man with a purpose

1

Hawke does not think her heart can stand the beating

0

Intense dark forest green eyes meet her cerulean blue.

Then the soldier calls him a slave and the elf turns around and rips his heart out.

Turning back to look at the group, blood dripping of his right hand, the elf winces and raises his left hand.

Four zeroes, just like hers, are slowly fading away from his left wrist, "What is this?"

Marian Hawke blushes profusely and stutters out her name, making herself heard before any of the men in her party, ruin this.

* * *

**Danarius obviously hid Fenris'. I have it in my head that no matter what, if you meet your mate, your numbers are going to show... even if you don't know what it means.**


End file.
